The present invention relates to data processing and communication, and more specifically, to improved communication via a serial interface.
Serial interfaces are commonly employed in data processing systems to support communication between system components and input/output (I/O) or peripheral devices. Typically, data intended for transmission via the serial interface is received in units (frames) of one or more bytes, and these bytes are serialized into a stream of bits that is transmitted over the serial channel in bit order and byte order from a transmitting component to a receiving component. For example, if a frame containing four bytes is to be transmitted, bit 0 to bit 7 of the first byte is transmitted, followed by bit 0 to bit 7 of the second byte, followed by bit 0 to bit 7 of the third byte, and finally bit 0 to bit 7 of the fourth byte. The receiving component may then deserialize the serial stream of bits to reassemble the original frame.